


blood in your mouth

by akitania (spacehairdresser)



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Kissing, M/M, Making Senpai Notice You, Mutual Manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 19:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7400998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehairdresser/pseuds/akitania
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Something about the way Mikado looks at him always makes him want to offer more than he is asked.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Aoba pays Mikado a visit, and some people can't help making things more complicated than they need to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	blood in your mouth

**Author's Note:**

> Set immediately after volume 9. In the novel, Aoba isn’t present for the fight that leads to Mikado getting dumped in the back of the van because he was out “gathering information.” With Mairu and Kururi. At the pool.
> 
> I'm adopting the chatroom format that was used in the fan-translated novels because, shamefully, I don’t own any of the official ones.

It’s different, coming to Mikado’s apartment alone. Aoba knocks three times, like he said he would, and shifts from foot to foot as he waits. Something like expectation hangs around him; the stupid thought keeps coming back that he’s never really been _alone_ with Mikado and that for some reason that will make this different. It can’t — but still, the sound of his heartbeat is obnoxiously loud in his chest.

When the door finally opens, Mikado looks halfway between exhausted and fearful. There’s a blade in his hand, probably a pocket knife. Aoba hadn’t known he owned one, and it takes him a minute to drag his eyes away from it and back to Mikado’s face, which is pale beneath the bruises.

“Oh, it’s just you,” Mikado says, a bit too late for it to sound natural. He smiles the wincing smile of someone who’s recently had a tooth broken and pulls the door open a bit further, but doesn’t invite Aoba in.

“Didn’t you get my message?”

Mikado blinks. “Ah, sorry. I was sleeping.” He turns, glancing into the darkness of his apartment. It’s barely sunset, but then, it’s not like either of them have had normal sleep schedules for a long time now. “Was there something you wanted? You didn’t have to come all this way.”

How deliberate was it, the way he would keep people at bay half the time and and act like their most confidante the other half? Aoba pushes down the thought and gives a bright smile. “Yoshikiri said you came out pretty bad in the last fight and I wanted to see if you were all right.” Fishing a small tube out of his pocket, he adds, “I brought some ointment, if you need it.”

Like he’s still half-asleep, Mikado lifts a hand to the bruising at the edge of his mouth and Aoba wills himself not to stare. “It wasn’t so bad. But thank you. Er, would you like to come in?” Finally, he swings the door the rest of the way open and steps inside, flicking on the light. Aoba follows.

“Sorry I couldn’t help. I was out gathering information.” Just because he’d failed miserably, it didn’t technically make it a lie.

He scans the room, unsure of where to go as Mikado crouches by his futon to check his phone. It’s plain, smaller and dingier than the place he shares with his mother, but it makes sense for an apartment rented by a high school student on his own. He can’t recall Mikado ever mentioning his parents, though he knows they live somewhere in the countryside. A small town boy in the big city, isn’t that the story?

Mikado stands, his mouth tightening. “Information?”

“Ah, it wasn’t anything important!” He doesn’t need to know yet that Orihara is back in Ikebukuro. That would only make things more complicated. “Don’t worry. I was just following up on some rumors.”

“Nothing to worry about?”

“Nothing to worry about.”

There’s an agonizingly awkward moment after; Aoba tries to return to studying the room, but realizes after a moment that there really isn’t much to look at. Mikado lets out a short, uncomfortable laugh. “I’d offer you something to eat or drink, but I’ve just realized I’m out of everything. We’ve been so busy…”

“I won’t keep you, senpai,” says Aoba, wanting nothing more. “But do you want the ointment? It really helps with bruises and stuff. They’ll hurt less, and the swelling will go down a lot faster.”

Mikado hesitates, then jerks a strange, thankful nod. “It’s probably best I treat them sooner rather than later, isn’t it?”

He extends a hand, but before he can start to move forward, Aoba crosses to him. He is inexplicably hyper-aware of the sound of his feet on the matted floor. Possessed with the kind of idiot boldness that he usually leaves for Yoshikiri and Gin and the rest of them, as he pulls out the little plastic tube again, he says, “Let me do it, senpai.”

There’s yet another awkward pause. “Thanks,” Mikado says tonelessly. He folds himself down so he’s seated on the edge of the futon, cross-legged, and Aoba kneels before him.

Mikado’s eyes keep darting from Aoba’s hands as he squeezes out a bit of the white cream to his face to something behind him. The door, maybe, he thinks. Not for the first time, he wishes he could open up the older boy’s mind and pull out his thoughts. Spread them like cards across the tatami to look at — but then again, he knows he’s happier not knowing.

He considers asking, _Were you expecting someone else when you opened the door?_ He doesn’t want to know that, either.

Spreading the cream across the bruises and scrapes is somehow less intimate than he expected. One index finger drags ointment down the side of Mikado’s nose, over the cheekbone, across his right temple. It smells of some nonspecific chemical, like—

The memory of Mikado binding his hand, fingers wrapped steadily around his wrist to keep it from trembling, flashes to the front of his mind. His breath catches.

Mikado had closed his eyes, but they blink open again. When he isn’t being distant, he is eerily watchful, and it’s that kind of careful, dispassionate scrutiny he’s turning on Aoba now.

“It’s fine,” Aoba says, only half-aware he isn’t answering anything in particular. Something about the way Mikado looks at him always makes him want to offer more than he is asked.

Those sharp blue eyes aren’t moving anymore, fixed instead on Aoba’s face, so he reaches at another moment of boldness. He scoots forward so his knees are almost touching Mikado’s calves and holds the other boy’s chin steady as the pad of his thumb swipes ointment by the side of his mouth, over a mark that he thinks might actually be a few days older than the rest. Aoba lets his hand rest there just a moment longer than necessary, just to see. His heartbeat is too loud again. Mikado doesn't move, just holds his gaze.

A phone buzzes. Mikado’s, he knows, since he silenced his own before coming in.

Mikado pulls away slowly — his body before his eyes, sending a shiver down Aoba’s spine.

While Mikado checks his phone, Aoba sits back, one leg folded under him, and studies. The full lurid spectrum of sunset light manages to saturate even the colorless room. He can see a reddish mark half-hidden by the collar of Mikado’s shirt, disappearing under the fabric, and he wonders if he should ask—

“It’s just Sonohara-san,” Mikado mumbles, typing something. The glow of his phone held so close to his face gives him a ghostly cast.

“Just?” Aoba asks, teasing because the phrasing bugs him. Mikado would not say _just_ if there wasn’t something he wanted him to think. “You shouldn’t be so dismissive when you’ve got such good luck! If Sonohara-senpai was texting _me…_ ”

Mikado’s laughter sounds a bit strangled, because it’s apparently _still_ that easy to wind him up. Because Aoba feels a perverse need to twist the knife in himself as well, he continues, “Why aren’t you dating her, anyway, Mikado-senpai? I bet she’d go out with you if you asked.” _Stop talking_ , the wiser part of his brain has been telling him, and he finally listens.

“Ah, I don’t… have much experience with all that.” Mikado’s tone is light, a little flustered, but his expression is way too composed. Is there something almost calculating to it?

“What, talking to girls?” _As if you didn’t spend the day completely failing to talk to the twins_ , that unusually talkative voice in his head chides.

“All that…” Mikado repeats vaguely.

At least there’s one point where he can claim high ground. With a tone much more like the one he uses with the rest of the Blue Squares than the one he typically reserves for Mikado, he tosses a challenge into the space between them. “Have you never even kissed anyone, senpai?”

Mikado almost stammers over his _no_ , but nothing in him is as uncomfortable as Aoba had predicted the question would make him. He’s shifted to kneeling, mirroring Aoba’s earlier posture and, damningly, his wide blue eyes won’t leave his face. It’s still that watchful, steady look — his own challenge. Sounding very careful, he adds, “I wouldn’t even know what to do.”

For a moment, Aoba feels weightless, like he was suddenly thrown into freefall. There was no invitation in that phrase, but he’s almost shaking under the eye contact and even with his bone-deep instinct to attack everything from all angles and tear it apart into manageable bits, he can’t help take this as a whole and _move_.

 _He’s expecting it_ , Aoba notices with a surge of relief just before their mouths meet.

Mikado’s lips are still soft, even though he’s seen them split by fists more than once, and open almost at once. Aoba catches something acrid on his tongue and realizes it’s the ointment, feels the jagged surface of a broken tooth. He is kissing the aftermath of everything they’ve done to and for each other. He wants to devour it.

He isn’t sure what he’s doing with his own hands, and finds one balled in Mikado’s shirt and the other at the back of his neck, fingers curling into his hair. He feels sweat, skin so hot almost expects it to burn him.

It’s almost all too much, and even with his brain’s insistence on slowing down time to pick moments apart, all it finds are streaks of hyperreal sensation and an absurd, grateful hunger. _This_ , this exact moment of hands and mouths and tearing into each other — it’s what’s played in the back of his mind before, the most ridiculous and recent addition to an obsession he’s been trying to silence. He wants Mikado to bite, to grab him back, to do _anything—_

What Mikado does is pull away, looking vacant.

“That’s what I thought.”

He’s speaking to himself like a scientist overlooking an experiment, and the words mean nothing to Aoba, who is trying to find some kind of internal balance. He braces both hands on the mat, feeling the ridges on his palms and trying to reconcile what happened with the physical world of tiny, airless apartments made radiant in a trick of the setting sun.

 _That’s what I thought_. It’s harder now to meet Mikado’s eyes, but he does, and in a very tight voice asks, “What does that mean?”

“What would you do—” Mikado cuts himself off and, bizarrely, looks to be suddenly on the verge of tears. His face is turning red where it hasn’t been purpled by bruises. “Nevermind. I’m so sorry about all of this.” He stares at the floor, miserable, and Aoba continues to reel for balance. “I really am sorry.”

There aren’t any questions he can think of that would help himself or Mikado or anything about this, so he keeps sitting there, trying to catch his breath in this claustrophobic room. His mind, for once, is a silent blank. Probably its revenge for all the time he’s spent ignoring his loyal streak of self-preservation lately.

One tiny, awful thought rises from the silence, which is: _All of this was a test_.

All right. So be it.

Aoba smiles, because he knows his smile can be horrible when he wants, and stands. He brushes off his jeans. “You don’t have to be sorry, senpai,” he says, in his best imitation of Mikado’s blandest tone. “I think we both understand each other better now.”

And rapidly, without letting himself look back, he turns and leaves, lets the door rattle in its hinges when it slams behind him. He doesn’t think about the sting in his eyes, just about the gathering darkness. It’s not a good part of town for an unarmed kid as small as he is. So he walks from one nowhere to another, only once brushing fingers across his lips before he remembers and stops himself.

* * *

_No one is in the chatroom right now._

_No one is in the chatroom right now._

_No one is in the chatroom right now._

_Tanaka Taro-san has joined the chat._

_Tanaka Taro  
_ It seems there still isn’t anyone around.

 _Tanaka Taro  
_ It’s a busy time for everyone, I guess. 

[Private Mode] _Tanaka Taro  
_ Orihara-san,

[Private Mode] _Tanaka Taro  
_ There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about, so I’ll just leave this here for you to read when you come back as well.

[Private Mode] _Tanaka Taro  
_ What is it like to have people who will do whatever you ask?

[Private Mode] _Tanaka Taro  
_ I heard that when you were in high school, there were girls who were willing to do awful things just so you would notice them.

[Private Mode] _Tanaka Taro  
_ I really don’t think I would like that.

[Private Mode] _Tanaka Taro  
_ I’d rather stand on even ground with my friends.

[Private Mode] _Tanaka Taro  
_ But then again, I guess we all have people we’d do anything for.

[Private Mode] _Tanaka Taro  
_ You just don’t expect that anyone else’s would be you.

[Private Mode] _Tanaka Taro  
_ Generally, I mean. You — Orihara-san specifically — probably expect it because there are so many people who are like that for you.

[Private Mode] _Tanaka Taro  
_ I think I’m different from you in most ways,

[Private Mode] _Tanaka Taro  
_ but I’m not really sure.

[Private Mode] _Tanaka Taro  
_ Sorry, I’m really tired and probably not making much sense. You can ignore all of this. 

_Tanaka Taro-san has left the chat._

_No one is in the chatroom right now._

_No one is in the chatroom right now._

_No one is in the chatroom right now._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I tumbl somewhat sporadically at [spacehairdresser](http://spacehairdresser.tumblr.com) and am always taking prompts there. Send me something less depressing than what I always end up writing when left to my own devices. :-/


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